Imagination Forest
by North13
Summary: Madeleine has been all alone since the death of her parents, ostracized because of her purple eyes. when a group of teens around her age find her will she stay with them or hide away forever? Inspired by the English cover of Imagination forest by Juby Phonic.
1. Chapter 1

Madeleine Williams was lost in the woods, again. There was really no reason for her to not know her way around this forest seeing as she had lived there for her entire life, and yet, here she was, staring at a trembling aspen tree she could have sworn she couldn't recognize, at all. Even though she had been walking around for a long time already. This is what came of her idea to have a morning stroll. She got lost.

Madeleine looked upwards at the sky, but it was too close to noon to tell in what direction she was in from there. And the trees around her didn't help at all as they didn't have even a fluff of moss growing on them to figure out the direction from where they would have been growing on the tree either. It seemed she was stuck with the tried and true method of guessing and checking any random direction she chose until she got it right.

Better get started then, this way of doing things, no matter what the activity was that she needed to use it for, always took a very, very long time to finish. And she had maybe eight hours or less before it became too dark to see anything around her let alone a path or something familiar to her that could guide her home. Eenie meanie minnie mo. She choose a completely random deer trail in the direction that she thought she had come from and started to walk down it scanning the trees to either side and in front of her for anything familiar to her that would jog her memory.

It turned out that the deer trail was not the right path to get her back to her home. But, the next path she choose was finally correct after she had backpeddled to her aspen tree she'd started from. It had taken her just under four hours to reach the clearing that her house cozily stood in.

It was a good thing for her that it had taken her so long in the end because there were people in her yard, lots of them, and one of them was striding forward to knock on her door. These people had come for her. They must be the strangers her parents had always warned her about. These people were definitely there to hurt her in some way. If she had come back earlier she would have been caught for sure. She had to get away now. She would lose herself in the woods, this time on purpose so that these people wouldn't find her. They were dangerous. She had to get away from them right now while they didn't know that she was watching them from the tree cover and not trapped in her little house like they thought she was. She needed to make them lose her trail now. They were standing at the door, waiting for her to open it. She wasn't in there though, their distraction with waiting for her to answer the door would give her the time that she needed to get far, far away from her home.


	2. You can look into my eyes?

'I have to get out of her, now, quietly.' Thought Madeleine to herself as she peered through the thick brush encircling the edge of the clearing where her cottage resided in peacefully.

She took a careful step back. Her eyes never once left the group of mixed teens gathered in her front yard. She took another slow step backwards and ran up against a solid wall of flesh.

Madeleine stiffened. There was a person behind her. She couldn't see who it was, not that she would recognize them, but, someone you can't see is always more scary than someone you can face and acknowledge the presence of. She couldn't see this person, so the unknown person instantly became much, much scarier. And she didn't have much experience with people in the first place, let alone scary people.

Madeleine felt both of the persons hands come forward to rest on her slim shoulders. The fingers tightened and held her there, trapped against this strong person's chest, held immobile, she wasn't strong enough to get away from this person's grip, there was no way she could break their hold. She was much too weak to get away and stay away from them, and they were strong.

"You were trying to run away, da?" A slightly childish voice, mocking her with its playful tone asked close to her ear. Madeleine tensed up even more, her muscles were starting to hurt, she was putting too much strain on them. Her anxiety was going up too far. She was scared. Her legs and hands started to tremble slightly. 'Please don't let this person notice that.'

"L-let g-go of me, p-please." She stammered out, going to look at the face she was sure was extended over her left shoulder, her head tilting to look but stopped, her face jerking back to steadfastly stare forward again. She wouldn't be seen as weak if she could help it. She could be strong willed if she needed to. She'd fool this person, they wouldn't push her around. Madeleine kept her voice quiet though, whispering her words to the person, she didn't want any of the intruders to her lovely yard to be alerted to her presence and come to back up this stranger that had probably come with them. 'Why else would this person be here?'

"Now, now, don't turn your face away from me. I want to see your eyes. You have a cute voice, da? I want to see if you have a cute face too."

Madeleine could practically hear the pout in the other's voice. 'The person's a she. Her voice sounds female.' Thought Madeleine. 'Who is she?'

The stranger broke into Madeleine's thoughts with her forceful commandment of Madeleine's next course of action. "Turn around, da? Do it now while you still have my attention, the positive kind you have now, yes? Your hesitation is making me very annoyed little one."

Those words scared Madeleine, not because of the tone of the girl's voice, no it was because the thing that had been asked of her was the one thing that she could never ever do. There was no way she could ever look this person in the face. Because of what her parents had always said to her before. Their warning about what her life would be like, the reason why she must always stay in the cottage away from everyone else. Every day that she asked them if she could be allowed to go outside her parents had always earnestly told her this, that she must never look into someone else's eyes. Because her eyes would turn that person to stone. That's what her parents eyes, her mother's red and her father's purple like her own, had always done. So, her own purple eyes, yes they would surely do that same thing as theirs had. They would petrify people. She didn't want that. Therefore, the one thing that she could never do was to look another person in the eyes, ever. She never wanted to turn someone to stone, no matter who they were. She didn't want to, not even someone that was scaring her.

Then the command came again, "I asked you to show me your face, yes? I expect you to turn around right now."

'No,' thought Madeleine. But, that wasn't up for her to decide. Quicker than she expected, fast enough that she couldn't get out a single word of protest, she was spun around in the circle of her captor's arms. The person's arms she was enfolded in came down from her shoulders to rest around the small of her back, one hand coming up to tip Madeleine's head upwards by her fine boned, delicate chin.

"Now that's better, yes? People are supposed to look into each other's eyes. Now we can both see each other."

Yes, they both could see each other and what she saw in that person's eyes shocked Madeleine. 'This girl has purple eyes too.' This thought rang out and repeated in her mind over and over again as she looked upwards into the taller girl's beautiful smiling face.

"Now that we can speak face to face, let's start over again. Hello there, my name's Ivanna. Isn't it nice to finally look into someone's face without fear?"


	3. Hi, I'm Madeleine

"Comrades," Ivanna declared as she marched into the cottage's clearing while dragging Madeleine along behind her. "I have found her. She was hiding and trying to sneak away, the bad little girl."

Ivanna turned and smiled a childish grin Madeleine's way. Madeleine shivered, for a horrible moment there she had sworn she had seen an angry purple shadow, like an aura, rising menacingly behind Ivanna. She was probably mistaken about this too, but, she thought she had seen an old man dressed in strange frost tattered clothes in that shadow behind her too. 'That just must have been my own silly imagination; that's it; my mind is just trying to play tricks on me. People don't have auras, or creepy guys that look like zombies coming out of their shadows.'

The group of teens turned around at the sound of Ivanna's voice.

"You found her? Are you serious? You actually found **her**-her? You're positive about this?" It was a middle sized girl in a reserved brown sweater and a pink semi-short skirt who had spoken. Her dirty blonde hair was done up in twin pigtails and she had small bobby pins holding her long bangs back. She spoke in a British accent that complemented her dressing style.

"Da, of course it is her. I did make sure to check, Alice. I'm not stupid." Ivanna smiled at Alice and tugged Madeleine forward in front of her holding onto Madeleine's shoulders in case she tried to bolt for the trees once again.

The girl certainly seemed like she would, her expression was akin to that of a deer when it knows that it is caught—trapped in the headlights of a speeding car close to hitting it, hurting it, and killing it. The girl probably thought they were going to hurt her in some way then. Madeleine's eyes couldn't possibly get any wider than they already were. The group of teens crowded closer. Madeleine was trembling visibly now.

'Is she going to wet herself?' Ivanna even thought to ask herself. She was genuinely concerned; the girl in her arms looked ready to go into a panic attack, or start hyperventilating, at any minute now.

The delicate shoulders in her hands were trying to curl in on themselves; a defense mechanism, she was trying to hide herself in plain sight. 'How must this feel to her? She has been living on her own for the past thirteen years, ever since her mother and father died when she was four, according to Monica and Julchen's grandfather; that Old Man Fritz. He was their informant on any information concerning the old members of his old gang of friends. He was the last one left alive. All of the other members had been hunted down and assassinated; all traces of them had disappeared without a trace; they had nothing besides Fritz to tell them about his late friends. It was kind of stupid that they were trying to set up the old club again when almost everyone in the last one had died. But, they needed to. They were all already in danger. They had to group together now or they would all be killed without ever having experienced friendship. Something none of them knew much about, but still craved. All of them had been left out by everyone else, just because of their strange eyes. They couldn't control the colour of their eyes. They were born like that. Bright, strange colours in a world where everyone else only had brown eyes.

This brings us to the present loud American trying to butt her way into Ivanna's conscious thought.

"Hi there little girlie, my names Amelia Jones. You are so going to join us and we are all going to be such good friends and totally save everyone like heroes, alright dudette?" Amelia winked to Madeleine; sticking her hand out in a thumbs up sign.

'Yep, this girl she had found would definitely die of fright if the American was allowed to keep talking any longer than she had been able to talk already. She would just freak Madeleine out with her loud voice and hero obsession.'


End file.
